REDISCOVERING GOD'S LOVE

The eclipse of the Gospel has gradually, but inevitably, led to a complete change of emphasis in Christian preaching. Instead of focussing on the greatness and glory of God, it now concerns itself with the glory of man. To the undiscerning person it may seem similar in some of its detail, but it is a different gospel altogether. Christ is no longer presented as the one who came to deal with the root cause of the human problem, but merely as the one who, if asked, will deal with the problems themselves. That is to say, he is the one who, by taking away the symptoms, will make us feel better. The root cause remains untreated.

Since preaching about the judgment of God does nothing to make people feel better about themselves, it is considered best to tone it down and make much more of God’s love. The outcome is that the nature of divine love has also changed. Instead of the Biblical portrayal of a robust determination to save his elect from their sins, God’s love is depicted as a feeble plea for helpless people to respond to his invitation. Human beings are invested with an ability to do what the Bible says is beyond them. The assumption has no foundation whatsoever.

Further, since the new gospel’s aim is to make people feel good about themselves, it lays great stress on spiritual experience, even though the exact nature of the experience does not seem to matter very much. As we would expect, this overstress on the importance of the emotions has been at the expense of truth-based experience. By ‘truth-based experience’, I mean that emotions of joy, peace and contentment are the fruits of believing and understanding the truth.

‘Rediscovering God’s Love’ deals with the question of what needs to be done to recover the Biblical message. A better insight into the content of my book will be found in the linked reviews.